Viewing the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s Les Misérables is like watching an art restorer wipe away decades of obscuring grime from a canvas and savoring what you forgot was hidden underneath – even seeing colors you didn’t know were there. This edition eclipses the quality of almost every production the Maltz has mounted in a decade.

Savoring the pungent joy and sorrow of Always…Patsy Cline does not require the audience to love the Eisenhower Era musical moment when country-western music began morphing into pop-rock. You just have to surrender to the skill and enthusiasm flooding Thinking Cap Theatre’s production inaugurating The Vanguard Sanctuary of the Arts venue in Fort Lauderdale.

After 11 years and counting on Broadway, a decade on the road and on its seventh visit to South Florida, some of the magic should have vanished from the musical Wicked. But the tour has not only maintained much of the magic, but arguably is even more heartfelt and polished than its predecessors.

The key to enjoying world premieres like Uncertain Terms at The Theatre at Arts Garage is to understand that you are seeing a work in progress. So picking out what works and what doesn’t is part of the reason to look in on Allison Gregory’s flawed but droll exercise in quirky whimsy about an extended family laying conflicting claims to the same home.

Even though chains hang from the rafters before Trust opens and the buzz will fixate on the S&M, sex is only the milieu for Zoetic Stage’s rollicking yet incisive study of how people’s need for dominance in a relationship is tied to their desperation to reaffirm their illusory self-worth.

Slow Burn Theatre Company gives the perennial favorite The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee as excellent a production as we’ve seen of it, hitting the perfect balance between the hilarious and poignant, marked with a child’s exuberance for living and an adult’s compassion for the angst over the process of losing innocence.